When reading the Old Testament, the chastisement of the Jews is relentless. Every time they turn their back on God through disobedience, they are attacked, enslaved, or displaced. Every time. But they kept on doing it.
Reading about the Old Testament Jews reminds me of watching a horror movie. You scream fruitlessly at the screen “Don’t do it!! Exile and slavery are waiting behind the door!!” Alas, alack.
That is the thing, characters in a horror movie do no know they are in a horror movie, they live their lives as if all is normal.
So too, life in chastisement seems much the same. Do you think that your average brick making Jew in Egypt realized that his people were being purified? Nope. He was a pre-occupied with making bricks as I am with going to work each day.
Chastisement can be that way. Many have this notion that chastisement as a sudden and unmistakable event of obvious biblical comeuppance “Sodom and Gomorrah” style. Sometimes. But if the Bible teaches us anything …
